Ashley Moody Discusses Online Threats To Children And What Lawmakers Can Do To Stop Them

2 days ago

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) spoke to witnesses about protecting children from digital harms.

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Transcript

00:00just quickly answer that.

00:01Sure.

00:02Well, these are products.

00:03So strict liability should apply here.

00:06If these companies have created a defective product,

00:10then all users should be able to sue them

00:14without having to even prove a duty

00:16if the product injured them.

00:22Thank you, Senator.

00:23Appreciate you being here today.

00:25I have been so impressed with this committee.

00:29I am a senator all of four weeks, so get ready.

00:33I bring to it with an array of passions I have acquired,

00:36not just as an attorney general,

00:38but as a mother of a teenager right now.

00:41And I'm so impressed with the topics

00:42that we have focused on, and specifically this one.

00:45It was shocking to me that the Senate

00:47was able to move forward pretty unanimously

00:50on some protections for children,

00:52and they ran right into the house

00:53that did not go along with some of those things,

00:55and I'm hoping that we can change that.

00:58As attorney general, obviously I fought in court

01:01against many of the platforms.

01:03I investigated platforms for harms to children.

01:07I am the mother dealing with this now.

01:09In fact, I tell people all the time,

01:10it is really hard to be one of the first generations

01:13of parents trying to parent children,

01:16and we don't understand what we're doing

01:18because we don't understand the technology

01:19to the degree they do.

01:21In fact, when I'm going through some of the controls,

01:25I often have to ask my kid what that means,

01:28which seems to defeat the purpose, but here we are.

01:31And while I can break down what we're addressing today

01:34by privacy concerns of children, certainly,

01:37harm to children, whether that is mental affects,

01:41addiction, or materials that they never

01:44would have been exposed to in the past,

01:45but they now have ready access to,

01:48one of the things I wanna talk about quickly

01:49is the access to our children by predators and bad actors.

01:54I think this is this third lane

01:56that we read about repeatedly in the paper

01:58every single day in my state,

02:02from doctors to predators to you name it,

02:05they are getting access to our children,

02:07and parents in the past

02:07could lock our children's bedroom doors

02:09and know they were safe at night,

02:10but that is not the reality anymore.

02:14In fact, in my own child's school,

02:16there were five teenage boys.

02:18A woman was arrested for posing as one

02:21and luring them and molesting them online,

02:23I think using Snapchat and TikTok.

02:26And of course, when you engage with the platforms,

02:29they will often deny that this is happening.

02:32But it is happening.

02:33And the best people that can represent that

02:35are the parents where it's happening

02:38to their children in their homes

02:40while they thought they were safe.

02:41And so I really commend you as a fellow parent,

02:47Mr. Guffey, for taking your pain,

02:49channeling that into just frustration and anger,

02:52because that is what is going to get

02:54the attention of lawmakers.

02:57I mean, we've tried to get the attention of the platforms.

03:00We've talked a lot about what needs to be done

03:02to force some restrictions and them acting on their own.

03:07But we need to talk about what needs to be done through laws

03:10and what I'm specifically concerned about.

03:12And I would open this up

03:13to whoever wants to answer this question.

03:16What is the thing that we can do as lawmakers right now

03:20to stop predators from getting access to our children?

03:25I can go, okay.

03:27Let me step down there and then we'll come to you.

03:28I wanna use this as an example,

03:30because the comment was made that

03:32we essentially have different laws for the outside world

03:35than we do from the inside world.

03:36If I had a storage facility

03:38and I stored only guns in there,

03:40and you as attorney general,

03:42and someone was breaking the law,

03:45and I said, okay, the majority are law-abiding citizens,

03:49but we also have terrorists

03:50and we're gonna store guns for criminals.

03:52And if I told you that you had to have the digital ID

03:56to get into that locker, you'd think that's ludicrous.

03:58But that's exactly the way that we treat CSAM.

04:01I mean, to me, I believe that if you're housing CSAM,

04:04you should be held responsible.

04:06But nothing is gonna change until we open up civil liability.

04:10These are the world's richest companies

04:12since the inception of man, and yet they are immune.

04:18And I'd say that if you have designed a product

04:21where you are exposing children to predators,

04:25and you can't stop that from happening,

04:27then it's a defective product.

04:29And all a parent or a victim should have to do

04:32to be able to sue you is just to show

04:34that you know about the problem and the extent of it.

04:37And in your experience,

04:39and I understand that this has happened,

04:42when parents have demanded and shown

04:44that this harmful material is online

04:45and demanded that they take it down,

04:47they've now told them about it, they know about it,

04:49and there have been refusals to take it down.

04:51Absolutely, and those cases get thrown out of court

04:54because the online platform says,

04:57well, I didn't know about that specific incident.

05:00Of course they're not gonna know

05:01about that specific incident,

05:02or they're gonna say, I didn't intend

05:04to harm that exact child.

05:06Mr. Pizzurro, I know you have law enforcement experience,

05:09and I'm grateful for that, thank you.

05:10My husband has career law enforcement.

05:13Understanding that predators can now get to our children

05:15through online platforms and online,

05:17what is the number one thing you would recommend

05:19to prevent that that we can do as Congress?

05:21Device-based age verification.

05:24You mentioned parental controls.

05:26If there was a framework for a parent

05:28just to shut the spigot off and make it easy

05:32rather than go through 25 different apps,

05:35the companies have this.

05:37If we can stop it at the device level,

05:39that's where we prevent children

05:41from getting on some of these images

05:42and offenders getting access to those children.

05:46Thank you, and since I am the acting chair,

05:47I don't want to exceed the boundaries of time.

05:51So I will turn it over to Senator Whitehouse.

05:54Thank you, and I understand that I've been given permission

05:56to close out the hearing at the end of my call.

Ashley Moody Discusses Online Threats To Children And What Lawmakers Can Do To Stop Them

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